


Sliske, But With A Rolled 'R'

by The_Rolling_Tomes



Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Character Analysis, Coding of Characters, Fandom Observations, Plentiful Salt, criticism of (and opinions on) modern psychiatry and -ology, headcanons (as examples), madness/mental health/neurodiversity, mention of unsettling hallucinations in both game and real life, quotes from both Runescape and writers/moderators, references to sexuality and queer/lgbtqia+ portrayal in media, relevant ranting (but ranting nonetheless), some adult language/swearing, spoilers for Sliske's Endgame and references to other quests/lore, usage of the term "queer"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23912635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Rolling_Tomes/pseuds/The_Rolling_Tomes
Summary: A few observations on Sliske, representation where he's concerned, and finally articulating my overall salt about the ways both have been handled in light of relevant information. It's a gunkball that's been lodged in my chest for a while, mismanaged, badly expressed in the past (especially in my first botched fic arc, which did, in retrospect, involve a kind of self-harm and unthinking harm to those ahead of me on the recognition front by proxy). One way or another, good or ill, it's properly out now.Of note: I don't know if this is SFG (Safe for Geenas), but I'll say it might at least be a PBGWG (Please Be Gentle With Geenas).
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	Sliske, But With A Rolled 'R'

“I have lived thousands of years and in that time I have watched everyone just repeat the same cycles again and again. It's as if all sentient life were devoid of creativity. It is so unfathomably tedious. But no one seems to have noticed it but me. They're all so obsessed with their little schemes, unaware that they're locked in a rut.”

  * Sliske, dialogue taken from _Sliske’s Endgame_



“I envisage Sliske as being bipolar, and his anger was _(deprimierter)_ outburst, but he quickly bounces back. Conversely, his overly-theatrical nature is when he’s in a more manic state.” 

  * Mod Rowley, as transcribed to Runescape’s official forums



“The top load all sound right to me. Seren is 'Serenist' I believe and a follower of Sliske is 'a crazy person' :p”

  * Mod Crow, Reddit



“Just confirmed with Mod Osbourne that the top lot are all right, with Seren being ‘Serenist’ and his preferred term for Sliske followers is scumbag.”

  * Mod Raven, Reddit



“Relomia just won't shut up about you - lovely girl, if a touch needy.”

  * Sliske to the player, in _Missing, Presumed Death_



Some word tallies from _Sliske’s Endgame_ Transcript:

  * Lunatic: 2
  * Delusion: 2 (omitting repetition via dialogue options)
  * Madness: 8 (omitting repetition via dialogue options)



And a figure:

  * Total number of fallen masks in _Sliske’s Endgame:_ 8



Lastly, two game-relevant notes: 

There’s an Invention perk simply titled “Hallucinogenic.” Among several other disturbing animations (and some neutral or charming), one hallucination experienced by the player involves the Giant Mole decapitating Sliske. 

The Talking perk installs a random character personality on your equipment, complete with dialogue only you can “hear.” Options include: a stalkerish personality, mockery of things perceived feminine through the perspective of a male character, a “split personality” Dawn/Lensig, a voice encouraging the player to slaughter, and a character who frequently begs the player to “let her out,” speaking of her situation in terms of confinement and fear.

In short, experiences common to specific types of neurodiversity that’re widely misunderstood - also loathed and feared, both baselessly - are reduced to horror stereotypes and exploited for ostensible “humor” value.  
  
I hear there’s a diversity Discord server for the game now. Neat.

  
  
  
  
  


I think quite a few people - Sliske’s writers included - are baffled by people who find something relatable _sans_ repugnance in the Praefectus Praetorio. Gauging by the fact the writers incorporated a god faction you can align yourself to in-game despite its titular character never achieving godhood, I don’t think they’re mystified Sliske _has_ a fan base (it’s probably fair to say the writers, at least, expected it) so much as by the often non-edgelordian, diverse nature of the people who wound up gravitating to his character. I suspect they thought the alignment choice would appeal most to the angry, misanthropic young nihilist and the gormless bigot entranced by unapologetic cruelty. Rorschach and Joker stans. Maybe some Richard Dawkins stans for good measure.

But who showed up? A lot of very gentle-natured, socially awkward people. A lot of _marginalized_ people. Those of the broad neurodiverse/neuropunk variety, and - as the kids among us like to tell it with openly manufactured, cheeky bravado in the face of the world’s general opposition to them and their existence - Sliske’s been adopted by the queer community; he’s ours now, tough shit.

From his writers’ perspectives, maybe it really is difficult to parse. Measured within the very imperialistic, colonization-heavy, excessively wartime structure of values established in the game, Sliske is a villain. He’s done horrible things. Inexcusable things. (Or, more accurately, the writers have ensured he has.)

But Runescape has plenty of villains with very little or no sizable and deeply, personally invested following. Sigmund. Khazard. Zemouregal. King Lathas. Bandos, although he technically has a joinable faction. Zenevivia. The Zamorakian infiltrator among the White Knights who fed Nomad information. Stripped of the popular fascination with elves as a whole, Lord Iorworth. Count Draynor. Dawn. Captain Dulcin. Necrovarus. Hreidmar. That’s not to say they haven’t been subjects of fandom interest, or that some of them don’t have any complexity to explore where the canon-established ends - or even that they don’t have a little coding embedded somewhere along the way - but nobody (as far as I’m aware) reacts with the intensity of personal injury when these or many other Gielinorian villains “needed to die” where that happened, or “deserved what they got” when defeated or humiliated.

They’re not mourned.

They’re also not heavily coded toward two marginalized groups, most of whose members’ lives are at least significantly defined by the inescapable misunderstanding, dismissal, abuse, and hate they receive, both socially and institutionally. Two groups with a common experience in almost every form of media: near-exclusive representation via the bad guys.

Now, I’ve been disagreed with for both suggestions: that Sliske’s coded queer and falls under the Bury your Gays header, and that his writers applied too many trappings of neurodiversity for plausible deniability. The first argument against came from another Runescape player and lorehoud, the second from a Jagex Moderator whose response boiled down to a Sock and Buskin mention and, “my statement about bipolar disorder was, in hindsight, probably unwise.”

So I want to cover both in a little more detail. To be thorough, because my first attempt to air my thoughts relied heavily on the idea that at least most recognized the representative significance of the same things I had, and had (at least) been peripherally exposed to the same relevant media history with which I’m familiar.

Maybe it’ll help clarify my stance. To that end:

  
  
  
  
  
  


**He’s Queer, My Dear:**

_“...a common experience in almost every form of media: near-exclusive representation via the bad guys.”_

In the interest of fairness, recent popular media has attempted a few awkward, stumbling, and often misguided efforts at making queer characters overt rather than implied, neutral or protagonist rather than antagonist. Runescape’s own cast of characters has broadened over the past few years in the same way. But the question remains - why is almost everyone so bad at doing it? Not just the neurotypical or the pericis hetero, but _everyone?_ Why do _we_ suck at it? Surely the complicated crosshatch of intersectionality isn’t all there is to it, as much as that contributes?

I’d done a Twitter thread with a little about this some months ago, but, since Twitter’s managed to careen downhill despite the advantageous starting position of being Twitter, I deactivated both accounts and the thread went to digital Valhalla right along with them. Though necessarily truncated there given Twitter’s character and thread limitations, here’s the content of that:

Queer people, since about 1934, have had the lesson driven home in televised, onscreen, and live stage media that we’re of inherently lesser value than our non-queer counterparts. The qualities and behaviors ascribed to us (coding) must be relegated to the villain, we must be narratively punished so as to reinforce the image of our subhuman standing in society when we appear, or we must not appear at all. (And here, the foundation that helped build Bury Your Gays.)

These rules in practice didn’t spawn in a vacuum. As silent film gave way to the “talkie,” vocal portions of the American public (portions that later helped empower the Catholic Legion of Decency) protested the content of certain films loudly enough that Congress began planning a restrictive censorship board to appease them. Only a few years prior, New York responded to one of Mae West’s plays, _The Drag,_ with the Wales Padlock Act, which expressly forbade homosexual and “sexual degeneracy” portrayal, the penalty for which included having the theatre in which it was presented padlocked for a year. (Neat trivia if you ever wanted to know where that specific brand of nostalgic Americana, the abandoned movie theatre, was properly birthed.)

To prevent being shuttered by Congress, Hollywood producers of note created the Hays Code, which - among other things - established that films must present the "correct standards of life,” a code of conduct heavily influenced by demands from the Catholic Legion of Decency which precluded displaying sexual activity or its outcomes even for married hetero couples. This resulted in a split (so to speak) of coded workarounds: one for straight, and another for queer.

Some of the straight ones you might know, since they’re present both in old movies and in references to those old movies in new media, but as an example: the foot-lift when the camera pans down from a kiss (or the “foot pop”). Since both the woman’s feet lifting off the floor would’ve been a scandalous insinuation of unapproved activities, producers started incorporating the foot pop as a signal that, although everything was on the up and up (while the camera was on the low and low), the unseen kiss had inspired some very _degenerate_ feelings.

(So help me, even if those of you reading this hate it, you _will_ walk out the door with the complimentary gift bag of tangent stuff I discovered while seeking answers to why everything produced by the Astralwerks label from 1999-2004 sounds like it was washed in the same ethereal electronica laundry load as Cassius’s album _1999_. Don’t drink stuff with “wormwood” in the ingredients and do electro, kids, or your mouth will taste funny for hours and you’ll get lost on the internet.)

You most likely already know some of what constitutes queer coding even if you’ve managed to avoid social media and analyses on the subject. For the male character - darkened lines/shadow effects and other effects of “makeup” around the eyes, effeminate behaviors, subservience until it’s time for the heinous plot to be unveiled, oftentimes slimmer profiles compared to their physically robust male protagonist counterparts, sharper features, liquidly suggestive movement overall. Those qualities given female villains are somewhat different and often less discussed - authoritative speech, fuller/deeper/throaty voices, a “maligning” quality (in magic, environment, partial or complete subsuming of another’s will), shamelessly salacious under- or overtones, clingier and/or more revealing clothing with accoutrements the hip kids call “extra,” confident posture and willingness to assert themselves in ways deemed masculine according to gender role traditionalists. Both move and speak dramatically. They captivate and capture the scene, arrest goings-on for their reveals and musical numbers. (Infrequently seen is the nonbinary or intersex, but that’s better attributed to their overall rarity in pop media.) Occasionally these qualities will be employed across genders - especially where openly sexual energy and extravagant clothing go - but invariably in such a way as to continue subverting preconceived gender roles.

In short, messing with gender stereotypes and grandiosity gave socially conservative consumers cues as to who was the villain (since villainy itself was, apparently, inadequate to the task of conveying it or insufficiently evil by itself), and positioned coded characters “where they belonged” according to the same. It sent queer consumers a “this is your lot in a morally righteous world” message but had an unintended side effect: giving us a media dominion of our own.

This isn’t limited to US media, either - Hollywood’s impact is felt everywhere, and England has had its own history of portraying coded queerness and villainy together for much the same reasons. Like it or not, the high-collared, purring, sexually-charged, grandly gesticulating, dramatic villain with a flair for the stage falls under the queer purview. 

And this, strangely, brings me to Sliske.

...but I think the point’s been made well enough.

  
  
  


**Insanitease:**

Disclaimer: I want to make it clear from the offset that I possess an _extremely_ unfavorable view of modern institutional psychiatric medicine and much of psychology. While many have found something individually beneficial in the first, and it’s tried to rehabilitate aspects of its image as “humane” or “the best we could do given the time and our understanding,” neither is exculpatory in the face of the system’s origin in eugenics. Its focuses still reflect that origin in goals and practice. The -ology is little better, since it categorizes behaviors and ideas with that framework as a backbone. As Tribs phrased it, they’re “in the profession of pathologizing lives.”

As an example: what differentiates delusion and deeply-held spiritual belief is… nothing. By their own admittance, it’s an arbitrary distinction. Whether you’re involuntarily imprisoned or given a nationally-syndicated media program depends whether or not your unproven take on reality is popular enough to be monetized, or fetishized and monetized by others (read: televangelism and appropriated, subsequently diluted beliefs from various Indigenous peoples, respectively).

There are some (among them the same Richard Dawkins I took a potshot at earlier) who take this to mean the religious or spiritual belief should be relegated to delusion. I suggest instead that the deeply-held spiritual belief (the popular and monetized) shouldn’t be alone in freedom of movement and right to exist where unproven takes on reality go. I propose that the problem isn’t with the lack of distinction, but with the institution doing the classifying - an institution whose successes are determined not by whether or not an individual is truly happy, or even safe, but by whether or not it can redefine happiness to fruitful contribution to the larger system which rejected and abused them in the first place and make the individual productive (not to mention publicly “palatable”) within it.

Failures, according to the same system? The kindest possible outcome for them is a sustenance-level existence where their privacy and dignity no longer exist. And that’s the _kindest._

Like I said, unfavorable.

That said, I - and anyone else talking about this kind of thing with a similar distaste for psychology/-iatry - get stuck using pathologizing lexicon. While the above several paragraphs absolutely qualify as a rant, the rant isn’t without purpose. The terms are necessary to talk about the coding and attributes given Sliske by his writers in a way that’s recognizable, but that necessity is bitter because it requires the speaker(s) to refer to lived, human experiences in clinically distant or regretful terms. At least here, from me, the distance and regret have nothing to do with the experiences.

Now, to the meat of the thing:

Many kinds/aspects of neurodiversity have no positive (or even neutral) representation in popular media. _Girl, Interrupted; The Shining, Psycho, The Dark Half,_ a bevy of characters seen in Marvel’s and DC’s universes; _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest -_ schizophrenia has _presence_ in media, but that presence is overwhelmingly violent, abusive, dangerous, the “motivation” given for a character’s malevolence, negative. Visual hallucinations of the non-recreational-substance-induced variety are invariably terrifying - blood seeping from the walls, bugs on or below the skin, monsters, the playing out of deep-seated fears in a strikingly linear way. Auditory hallucinations and cases of multiplicity are always depicted as coherent/semi-coherent voices torturing the one who hears them or inviting that person to the harming of self or others. “Mood disorders” are expressed as exaggerated, cartoonish volatility. Even less violence-attributed neurodiversity is the subject of infantilization and ridicule - tee-shirts proclaiming, “Ask me about my ADD! Or pie or a dog! I have a bike! Do you like TV? I saw a rock! Hi!”

Given the freedom with which Sliske’s writers have used pathologizing/sanist language while referencing him in the past, it’s fair to say they dipped heavily into the pool whether or not they were cognizant of how much material they’d amassed that lends itself to neurodiverse interpretation. Nor is he the first Runescape character to be saddled with tropes: Mads Eadgar, Skavid, and Melzar - the “crazy survivalist,” “shell-shocked veteran/abuse made them evil,” and “driven to madness” respectively (although Melzar especially is a grab bag of madness tropes) - the Oracle or “mad oracle,” Brassica Prime’s “loon with a heart of gold” (identified as insane by Armadyl, and kinder/more wholesome than the surrounding gods), many of the characters available in the Talking Invention perk, a good third of the wizards at the Wizards’ Tower, the list goes on. Some tropes more damaging than others.

So what sets Sliske apart? Why didn’t those who gravitated to Sliske instead gravitate to characters who’re effectively blank slates for neurodiverse headcanoning? Why not at least focus interest on the kinder characters, even if they’re basically a cliché with a name and rendered model attached?

Asked, answered. They’re basically clichés with a name and rendered model attached. All the work of making them individually relatable rests with the neurodiverse player or headcanoner prying apart the adhesive in which they’re set and adding complexity; alone, they’re open-and-shut cases. A person can speculate about events and the parts they played in them, or do the considerable work of giving them background stories almost from scratch (some do; I’ve done it), but there’s nothing to interpret. A similar problem exists in taking characters with _no_ writer-given hint, headcanoning them to normalize our existence in the worlds in which we seek relief from demonization and mockery - we’ve been doing that for years, with everything, and that isn’t representation. Writers don’t get credit for what they don’t do.

But Sliske isn’t just an open-and-shut trope or three. We _are_ given hints and symbols that either link up undeniably with criteria assigned various neurotypes or lend themselves readily toward representing the same.

Here, a well-constructed breakdown and analysis of Sliske with a dissociative-multiple, schizoaffective interpretation in mind, authored by Tribs: [ https://skeindaddytribs.dreamwidth.org/261.html ](https://skeindaddytribs.dreamwidth.org/261.html) . This addresses the masks, their interactions in relation to Sliske, behaviors, mannerisms, shifts in mood, activity/dormant periods, and a number of other elements that, together, make a striking case for Tribs’s or adjacent interpretations. Neither his nor my piece here suggest the writers had a competent representation in mind, but I (re)submit the writers semi-consciously deployed enough coding that, given a little thought, makes Sliske a springboard where rep headcanons - not _ex nihilo_ but imagination exercises where canon’s _terra firma_ gives way to maneuvering room - are not only possible, but uncannily fitting.

My own interpretation mingles in the same circles but is somewhat different: I headcanon him (them) as a gateway plural system which also features fictive introjects of… well, Sliske (the Face of the system). His fourth-wall-breaking suggests his awareness (as Tribs mentions) of the player as a game avatar, but further that the world itself is manufactured. It’s not a stretch to imagine his interpretation of his presence there as fictive, or less real than in some extra-RS-cosmological elsewhere, and so he incorporates that aspect into his multiple fictive introjects given the masks also allude to awareness beyond Runescape. The other individuals in his gateway system are purely a product of my preference, my sought representation.

A part of the lore (as it relates to Sliske) that appealed to me for further interpretation: Shadow Realm and Shadow magic. The Shadow Realm strikes me as derealization (and an enviable fulfillment avenue for dissociation) manifest, in large part because it contains aspects common to many derealization experiences - the dimming of color from the world, sharper contrast in some places, haziness and indistinctness elsewhere, warping and dulling of images, overall a sense of withdrawing from sensory input or finding that input too intense. Other characters are demonstrated to have access or partial access - a potential metaphor for variety in experience with depersonalization and derealization - but Sliske is, canonically, unparalleled in his relationship with it. The associated magic intrudes on Gielinor, like hallucinations or elements of a manifested paracosm given undeniable impact. While I converted some of this to apply to my WG’s ficverse in a more physical-properties way, much of it was kept distant from that because of the personal investment.

As I said, these aren’t cases made for what should or must be canon, but cases made for how much neurodiversity-friendly raw material is given without specificity. Divested of the exhausting parts requiring clever manipulation or elimination (that old “fuck canon” sentiment among many fanfic writers), Sliske’s character is rife with potential, coded enough to draw our attention, malleable enough (by accident) that no one neurotype is preferred or excluded. It teases and begs neurodiverse interpretation.

“The difference between Sliske and the Joker, is that the Joker is just nuts. Everything Sliske did, he did with a plan in mind.” - Mod Raven, Runescape Official Discord  
  
So I hear there’s a Diversity in Runescape Discord server.

  
  
  
  
  


There’s a two-panel Mario meme in which Princess Daisy asks Princess Peach, “aren’t you tired of being nice?” then leans in conspiratorially and asks, “don’t you want to go _ape shit?”_

I originally intended to keep the tone of the thing (up to this point) more analytical than attitude, but the trouble with writing about something close to home is that it’s likely to turn out personal. I’d _like_ to lose my shit. And I say, “I’d _like_ to lose my shit,” because, “I’m _this close to losing my shit so often_ , you don’t even _know,”_ \- despite it being absolutely no more threatening than when a neurotypical person airs the same sentiment - gains a big, scary implication when it comes from a schizoaffective person.

When the writers treat neurodiversity like an object of mockery, then have the temerity to wax sensitive about mental health during the awareness-label-affixed weeks and months, I’d like to lose my shit. When the content creators fish in the same trope barrel as the deep social conservatives of old, then have the gall to invite us all to their Diversity in Runescape Discord server to provide them free a service that is, in fact, a paying position in everything from book editing, to company policy establishing, to comics, to legislature, to _literally other video games..._ I would like, as the kids say, to little a lose my shit, as a treat.

I mentioned earlier that Sliske developed a following where most other villains hadn’t, and a deeply personal response among his fans to the outcome of _Sliske’s Endgame_ unmatched by any other villain in RS3’s history. I’ve explained at least part of why (with a nod that there may be still more coding and qualities I haven’t considered). But there’s another side to that coin.

No other villain has had the dubious honor of developers and moderators routinely stopping to piss on their grave nearly four years later. We aren’t even left with what was, but told (multiple times) in various Q&A sessions that he was intended to be more this, less this, and (again, multiple times) that he was _difficult to write._ “Too clownish.” Backtracking on the references to the neuroatypical. A comical attempt at gaslighting, _Madagascar’s_ CGI penguin descending a hole and telling us, “you didn’t see anything.”

But still bringing him up, again and again. Wizards shit themselves in the old days, don’t you know, and vanished the evidence.

And we won’t talk about the symbolism of Sliske being stabbed and stabbing the World Guardian with the same implement. Or of a “Sliske in our minds.”

Accidental, I’m sure.

_The joy of repetition really is in you._

_Under and under and under and under and under,_

_The spell of repetition really is on you,_

_And when I feel this way I really am with you._

Hot Chip - _Over and Over_

**Author's Note:**

> Because no more vitally than now has the need for unambiguous stating of one's positions ever presented itself: there's a difference between criticism and harassment. That I think multiple disservices have been done to Sliske's character, and that Jagex has done poorly where the above communities (and members of Runescape's fan base in those communities) go, do _not_ mean I condone making those writers' or developers' lives miserable. I don't wish them ill. I want better from them.
> 
> Also, just in case it isn't readily apparent - none of this is a stab at anyone who's kept Sliske canon-compliant villain in their own minds and works. This thing argues the case for people who chopped up canon and kept only the bits they found choice, or saw something of themselves in Sliske, and why some of the game writers' later-game decisions and backtracks have the capacity to wound in an uncommonly personal, history-and-present-exacerbated way. There're quite a few fanworks who've kept closer to canon that I enjoy very much; even now, some of them are still my favorites.
> 
> Even if you dislike this - even if it drives you absolutely bugshit - thanks for stopping by and reading. And I mean that.


End file.
